


Decisions

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [44]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 07:16:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14765069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: Max and Epharia make a momentous decision.





	Decisions

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: this was the 'thesis' piece when I started this series. [ This song was stuck in my head for days and before I even remembered who sang it, I knew it was for Max.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNsQewlFtEs)

_It started out as a feeling_

_Which then grew into a hope_

 

_Which then turned into a quiet thought_

_Which then turned into a quiet word_

 

_And then that word grew louder and louder_

_'Til it was a battle cry_

_I'll come back when you call me_

_No need to say goodbye_

 

Max came back. It was inevitable, and impossible, and terrifying. The last time those towers had come into sight, he’d been lying in the back of the Gigahorse with Furiosa beside him, both of them half-conscious and no one certain they would survive their arrival.

Epharia had cautioned him against returning. Well, caution wasn’t the right word… she had come up to him the night he told her about it and she’d snarled in his face, teeth flashing white in the dim flame. “Why do you think we left in the first place?” she snapped. “Because people get _hurt_ when they rely on us, and we can’t be what they need us to be. You think we can go back and shove our ghosts in their faces? That we can unload all our fears into the Green Place they’re trying to build? You heard the market men. They’re witch-queens now, they don’t need the likes of us.”

“What if we need them?” Max had answered, staring into Epharia’s eyes and knowing her fear was his as well. “What if we lose our names again?”

“That hasn’t happened.” 

“Yet.” 

They sat in silence for a moment as Epharia tried to think of a comeback. She was trembling, and it wasn’t that she was afraid of what would happen to _them_ if they went back. She was only afraid of what could happen to the Sisters. To the Queens. To Furiosa.

As his ghosts kept reminding them, Max couldn’t save everyone. Sometimes it felt like he couldn’t save anyone. But he’d been feeling something different, ever since he’d strapped a branch of cloud pine to the gear in the back of his bike. For the first time in so many years, for the first time since Jessie’s death, he felt that maybe… maybe there was someplace he could go back to. Furiosa’s air-starved voice rasped in his ear, whispering truths she was too close to death to know she spoke. _Get them home._

“We haven’t the right,” Epharia said, but the angry fear had gone out of her. She moved away, shoulders slumped, and fell into a pile of fur by his side. “That place. If it is everything the market men said. We chose our leaving long ago, Max, and it chose us. We haven’t the right to go back and ask for a home as if we’re someone who can stay. You know we can’t.” 

“The Road War only lasted four days,” he said instead of answering. Epharia was right, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t right too. “In those four days, how many times did we save her life? Their lives?”

“War is different.” Epharia said without looking at him. “We belong at war.” 

“Maybe,” Max hesitated, taking a moment to taste the idea on his tongue before saying it, rolling it around in his thoughts before letting it out. He wasn’t sure what to make of it himself. “Maybe it’s like this. They left, didn’t they, they had to leave. But they had to come back, too. She had to go back.”

Furiosa. The one who was herself, but also them. Furiosa who had tried to kill them, who had saved them. The one they had saved. The one they had saved. 

That was when he had regained his name, not just remembered it. The ghosts that shouted it wouldn’t have let them forget. But until that moment, with his blood running in her veins and her cheeks growing less pale in the Wasteland sunset, he had not _been_ Max. He had only remembered who Max was. And Epharia had been just as lost, had descended into madness with him and dug her teeth into human skin, into the writhing Dust of other daemons. She had been more animal than daemon on that path down Fury Road. 

Furiosa was the one who had saved them, because they had been able to save her. And it had been so clear that they were made of the same stuff, two road warriors lost in the Wasteland. Max had known even before she did that she’d have to go back. To fix what was broken. 

“If she had to go back after leaving, then maybe. To fix what’s broken in us. So do we.” Max stumbled over the words, dug dust out of his eye and pretended he didn’t care about Epharia’s answer. 

The dingo sighed after a long minute and put her head down on her paws. “Fine,” she said. “If you think it’ll help. We’ll go back. But don’t you dare promise her that you can stay.” 

Max didn’t smile, but he ran a hand down Epharia’s spine and settled back into his bedroll and looked up at the stars. They were so much brighter now. So much further away. “Alright.” 

 

 

 

_Now we're back to the beginning_

_It's just a feeling and no one knows yet_

 

_But just because they can't feel it too_

_Doesn't mean that you have to forget_

 

_You'll come back when they call you_

_No need to say goodbye_

 

_You'll come back when they call you_

_No need to say goodbye_

 


End file.
